The video appeared in many social media, including Mundonarco.com. We recommend those interested in learning more about Mexico’s drug war to visit that site. The video is also posted here as a reference.

The video begins with text accusing the Gulf Cartel of a series of attacks against illegitimate targets and then falsely attributing them to the Zetas with messages signed in their name. These attacks involved targets including the ministerial police, a school, and a hospital. Though less certain as Glittering Generalities, a casino and an electrical company should be illegitimate targets on their basis of adversely affecting the public. The focus of the video was to allege that the Gulf Cartel, and not the Zetas, was responsible for those attacks, to punish Gulf operatives in retaliation, and to challenge the Gulf Cartel to fight the Zetas directly instead of trying to intimidate society (a glittering generality).

The interrogation is focused around establishing the operatives’ names and affiliations with the Gulf Cartel. The interrogator then poses the question of who was responsible for placing the messages threatening society in the Zetas’ name. The prisoners respond that the operatives were associated with the Gulf Cartel, give their aliases, and reveal the Gulf commander who ordered the deeds.

The conversation with the prisoners ends abruptly, and the interrogator then threatens the Gulf operatives who may be watching, as well as insulting them with Name Calling (asses, queers, and dogs). He warns that this is what will happen to the queers who work with the Gulf Cartel, and states that Ciudad Victoria (presumably the site of the disputed atrocities, as well as the place where the video was being produced) is Zetas territory. The prisoners are then hanged.

In addition to the previously mentioned propaganda techniques of Name Calling, Glittering Generalities were referenced as the illegitimate targets of the enemy cartel: the ministerial police, a school, and a hospital. Like all interrogation videos, it relies upon the Testimony technique. Therein lays a flaw in what is otherwise a compelling video: The audience is never given evidence why these two prisoners, who look undistinguished in clothing and appearance, would have insider knowledge on what Gulf Cartel commanders have ordered in their war against the Zetas. Viewers who disapprove of cartels attacking police, casinos, schools, hospitals, and the electrical company may look upon that fate as precisely what the state should be administering if it had the ability to carry it out. Because hanging is a form of death associated with state execution, it visually framed the Gulf Cartel as the enemy of society, and the Zetas as exercising social authority by punishing that enemy (both Transfer techniques).